“Caring for those who cannot afford health coverage”
Published 30 Nov 2017 | swissinfo.ch
by Tony Ganzer and Geraldine Wong Sak Hoi
“…Health care in the United States has prompted aggressively partisan debates about the role of government in social services, about costs, and even about taxes. Most skirmishes don’t include extended bipartisan recognition of the people who fall through the cracks of the American patchwork system, and the threads by which some of them are barely hanging on.
Even with implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, there are still 28 million non-elderly uninsured people in the country. Although Obamacare expanded health coverage and assistance for millions of people, it doesn’t equate to universal coverage. Cost is a big reason why people remain uninsured, and for some, a lack of legal immigration status prevents getting insurance. Others without insurance faced a problem of making too much money to qualify for subsidies on the insurance exchanges, so they opt to roll the dice without insurance rather than pay full price.
A major group helped by the ACA are those too poor to have insurance through an employer plan or through the open market. Medicaid is the main public program available to help low-income or some disabled individuals (it covers 62 million people). A similar program called the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, helps cover children. Part of the ACA allowed for states to expand Medicaid coverage, opening up Medicaid to people who weren’t initially eligible. But states weren’t forced to expand the program and could structure it to their preferences, which has led to a disparate system…”
